Humans May Become Tentacled Monsters, and That’s OK

Photo: Jonathan Wilkins

Characters in sci-fi films like Star Trek and Alien may have access to amazing futuristic technology, but basically they’re people just like us. But io9 editor Annalee Newitz thinks the real future may be far stranger. Taking her cue from books like Lilith’s Brood, she imagines a world in which humanity has evolved into lifeforms that to us would seem like monsters.

“We might become tentacled aliens in the end,” says Annalee Newitz in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And that’s okay. That’s a win, if we do that. Because it means we survived, and we changed to meet changing environmental conditions.”

Changing environmental conditions are something she’s given a lot of thought to lately. Her new book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, chronicles the history of extinction-level events on the planet Earth, and examines ways we might prevent or weather the next one, though many of the most interesting survival strategies are currently considered too unorthodox by most scientists.

“Scientists have to really focus on the here and now,” says Newitz. “They can’t say wacky stuff like, ‘We’re going to change the germ line and make humans who can live on Titan.’ But science fiction writers can, and they can really think in long-term ways about how science will impact culture, so thank goodness for science fiction.”

Listen to our complete interview with Annalee Newitz in Episode 88 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above), in which she describes the role of algae in your future, explores the connections between zombies and capitalism, and explains why we should all be practicing megapolisomancy. Then stick around after the interview as guest geek Julia Galef, host of the Rationally Speaking podcast, joins hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley to discuss rationalism in science fiction.

Annalee Newitz on pragmatic optimism:

“When you look at the history of mass extinctions on Earth, it really does feel like a grim chronicle of death, and also when you look at human history and all the times we’ve almost gone extinct it’s even more depressing. The turning point for me was when I was researching the worst mass extinction that ever happened, which was 250 million years ago … And so I’m reading about this grim period on the planet when most of the life was slime … You can see a layer in the Permian where there’s all kinds of life and fossils from many different types of plants and animals, and then suddenly there’s this stark black layer, and that’s the slime layer, where the only thing that’s hanging around was slime, eating dead bodies a lot of the time. And then above that you could see the re-emergence of diverse life. And that to me was hopeful.”

Annalee Newitz on Star Trek staying relevant:

“One thing that [J.J. Abrams] has done is he’s switched the importance of the lead character. So it used to be Kirk, Kirk, Kirk, everybody’s all about Kirk, and now I feel like Spock is the main hero, and that’s really interesting. I think it reflects a dramatic shift in our culture toward making the geeky, logical character into the heroic figure at the center of the story. Spock is the one who makes the good decisions, he’s the ethical center of the story, he has true passion. Because of course normally he’s rational, so when he’s passionate it’s something that’s meaningful. It’s not just because he’s like Kirk where he’s passionate about everything because he’s a doofus who’s just never in control of anything. So that I think is just a great example of how Star Trek can have staying power, because it’s a story about a future that many of us hope will come to pass, and it’s a story about a future that responds to changing conditions.”

“I never really understood how Spock or Vulcans in general could actually just completely suppress their emotions … I don’t understand how you could function as a sentient being and not have emotions. In the case of Data, he has a program, and so he’s following what it says in his program, but for Spock? How does he operate? How does he make decisions if he doesn’t have any reason to want something more than anything else? Is he just following the rules of Starfleet? What about everyone who’s not in Starfleet, where they’re just Vulcans who have a job or something, how do they make decisions? I don’t understand.”

Julia Galef on rational machines:

“Probably [AI machines] would be rational, because they would be programmed to be that way, unlike the human brain which just evolved in a haphazard way … So yeah, super-intelligent machines would have a built-in utility function of things that they care about and would basically flawlessly … be optimizing for those goals that they were programmed to have. And whether that would be good for us–humanity–is a real open question … Let’s say the computer program cared only about creating as many paper clips as possible. There’s nothing about hating humans in that utility function, but still, creating as many paper clips as possible involves either enslaving humans to force them to create paper clips, or–probably more likely–eradicating humans so that they can’t prevent the machine from turning things into paper clips.”